Brotherly love and competition underscores Sydney and Chase Brown’s first NFL meeting

From the outset of his tenure as Illinois’ head coach in 2021, Bret Bielema preached to his players that practice habits became game-day reality. It was by this rule that he forbade Sydney and Chase Brown from practicing against each other in live tackling sessions for the final two years of their college careers.

During the first intrasquad scrimmage of Bielema’s inaugural fall camp, Chase, a running back, was tasked with blocking his twin brother Sydney, a safety, who was sent on a blitz. The twins punctuated the play with a pushing match. The next thing Bielema knew, on a play or two later, there was a pile of players on the ground and Sydney and Chase were scrapping in the middle of it.

Bielema kicked the Browns out of practice that day. But that didn’t stop them from competing in everything else, on and off the field, for the rest of their time at Illinois. Who could make more plays in their respective roles? Who could lift more in the weight room?

“Getting to know them over the course of time, there’s so much unconditional love between the two of them,” Bielema told The Inquirer. “But they will not yield to the other.”

That makes Sunday’s contest between the Eagles and the Cincinnati Bengals all the more interesting to Bielema. For the first time in their 24-year-old lives, Sydney and Chase will play against each other in game action. The odds that they come into contact on the field are slim, but not impossible — Chase, the Bengals’ fifth-round pick in 2023, has carved out a starting offensive role in the last two games, while Sydney, the Eagles’ third-rounder that year, will contribute on special teams in just his second game back since tearing his ACL in January.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Sydney Brown is finishing the long journey back from an ACL injury. How soon can he help the defense?

Still, the Brown twins don’t need to go directly head-to-head to show off their competitive spirit. Its essence paves the paths they forged to reach this stage of their careers.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now without the relationship of competition that we share together,” Sydney said.

Tod Creneti, the head coach at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Bradenton, Fla., didn’t realize it was possible for two athletes to compete while stretching until he witnessed Sydney and Chase in their first practice.

Every session began with a dynamic warm-up. The twins, who transferred to St. Stephen’s for their junior year of high school from London, Ontario, stared each other down as they tried to outdo one another in the drills. On each lunge, it seemed as if they were trying to calculate the depth of the other twin’s back knee. On each skip, they watched to see whose feet turned over faster.

The year before Sydney and Chase arrived, St. Stephen’s finished the 2015 season 9-2 and won the division championship. The group already had tremendous talent, according to Creneti, but the Browns set a new standard in work ethic.

“Our kids thought they knew what hard work looked like,” Creneti said. “But Syd and Chase showed up and they practiced like their life depended on it.”

In Sydney’s eyes, giving it their all was the only option. The boys were raised by their mother, Raechel, who suffered from immune thrombocytopenia, a blood disorder in which the immune system attacks platelets. Unable to work, Raechel, the twins, and their younger sister, Mya, bounced between living in shelters and the home of her mother, Nancy. Sydney and Chase had shown promise playing high school football in Canada, but they were told by people they trained with that if they wanted to play college football in the United States, they needed to play in high school there, too.

“When we moved to Florida, we realized it was an opportunity that our family was sacrificing for and we knew this was really, like, one shot to get out,” Sydney said.

» READ MORE: Eagles locker room: Sydney Brown discusses his nearing return before Bucs game

Sydney and Chase appeared to feel at ease on the football field, helping St. Stephen’s win all of their games in which they suited up for two seasons. They were less so in the classroom, according to Creneti.

But at St. Stephen’s, the cool kids were also the smart kids, and the Browns sought to fit in. With the help of their host parents, Phil and Karen Yates, Sydney and Chase got caught up in math and science. Phil, a former Navy pilot with a knack for math and physics, spent many nights a week at the dining room table working with the boys.

“We had the right mindset,” Chase said. “We knew what we wanted to achieve. And we just stuck to that dream.”

That sense of competition translated to the college recruiting process, too. Because St. Stephen’s was a smaller school, Creneti said that few programs believed that the Brown brothers were as talented as their performances indicated on film.

Sydney didn’t have a Division I offer at the Power Five level until Illinois came along two days before signing day. Chase drew more interest across the country and eventually committed to Western Michigan, which boasted a football program and an aviation school. He initially sought to follow in Phil’s footsteps and become a pilot.

“It was tough, because we both really relied on each other,” Sydney said. “Even when we left Canada, we had each other to be with. That was really a moment where we both kind of struggled with it.”

» READ MORE: Eagles secondary prepared for explosive Bengals passing attack, led by Ja’Marr Chase

Their separation didn’t last long. Chase transferred to Illinois after his freshman season at Western Michigan. When Bielema and his coaching staff came in two years later, both brothers blossomed: “When preparation meets opportunity, good things happen,” Bielema explained.

Sydney started all 24 regular-season games, finishing with a team-high 81 tackles in 2021 and a Big Ten-leading six interceptions in 2022. Chase ranked fourth in the nation in rushing yards in 2022 (1,643), becoming a Doak Walker Award finalist as one of the top three running backs in college football.

Still, their year apart gave the twins time to grow as individuals, preparing them for their eventual NFL separation. Bielema tried to make a push for them to stay together. He was on the New England Patriots coaching staff when twins Devin and Jason McCourty were on the team, giving him an up-close view of “the power of twins that work together” at the professional level. So, when Bielema spoke to teams including the Eagles and the Seattle Seahawks about Sydney and Chase, he touted the potential benefit of drafting them both.

“You want to talk about a dream?” Sydney mused. “That would’ve been crazy.”

But Sydney also said he knew that their split was inevitable. Regardless, the draft served as yet another opportunity for the twins to one-up each other. Chase had always liked to tell people that he was the first born of the two, but Creneti warned him that his narrow advantage in the age department would have no juice in their brotherly competition if a team selected Sydney first.

His omen came to fruition. When Sydney got the call from the Eagles on the second day of the draft, he experienced a feeling that he said he wished he could bottle up and experience over and over again. At the same time, it was a moment he couldn’t fully enjoy with friends and family in Ontario because of the suspense surrounding Chase’s future.

» READ MORE: Eagles think they finally drafted a ‘red star’ safety in Sydney Brown

“I really didn‘t feel like I got drafted,” Sydney said. “I was like, ’Yeah, I‘m ready to kind of celebrate this moment with my family and my people,’ and I just didn’t. It wouldn’t feel right without my brother being there, because I wouldn’t be here without him.”

The next 24 hours were stressful. Creneti called Chase “despondent.” On Day 3, even though Chase didn’t want people around, Sydney insisted on organizing a gathering so his brother could have his moment, too. As soon as the tears sprung to Chase’s eyes upon answering the Bengals’ call, Sydney wrapped his arms around him on the couch in celebration.

“You just see in that moment, it’s been the two of them their whole lives,” Creneti said. “And they’ve always been there to support each other and to look out for each other and to hold each other accountable.

“And in that moment, they’re both celebrating a dream come true that I’m sure way more people told them that would never happen than would.”

The morning after the draft, the Brown twins and Creneti had brunch at a hotel in London, Ontario. While seated at a table tucked away in the corner of the restaurant, Creneti watched the typically ultraserious, ultracompetitive brothers relax in the aftermath of the biggest inflection point in their football careers.

“Even though there was this big thing coming and they still had to prove themselves and they would both say, ‘I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t done anything yet,’ they had made it to that point,” Creneti said. “And to see them both lighthearted and laughing, to know everything they’ve been through to that point, it affects your soul.”

» READ MORE: ‘I want to be a feared player’: Eagles’ Sydney Brown makes an impression with his fast-paced style of play

For Sydney, that meal marked the calm before the whirlwind of the NFL schedule, which would set the Brown twins on their own paths for the first time since their freshman years of college. But even 600 miles of separation couldn’t prevent them from finding ways to compete against each other.

They wage friendly bets over the PGA Tour Xbox game (Sydney said he wins most of their virtual competitions, but he estimated that Chase would disagree). Just like they did in college, the twins try to outdo each other on game day, and they’re quick to let the other brother know when they made a play.

“We’ve always played offense and defense,” Chase said. “And it’s not like we played the same position where you can statistically compare everything that we do. But the main thing that we do is just if he makes a play, I’m trying to make a play. If I make a play, he’s trying to make a play.”

But game days for Sydney had been nonexistent over the last nine months as he rehabbed from ACL surgery. He made his season debut last week against the Cleveland Browns. While sidelined from football, Sydney called Chase his “psychologist.” He was always there to listen to Sydney as he experienced the tumult of the first long-term injury of his football career.

Those calls are kept to a minimum this week. While the twins won’t cut off communication as they prepare for Sunday’s game in Cincinnati, they’ve agreed to not speak about football, bucking their typical trend of discussing their weekly opponents and key players.

» READ MORE: Eagles vs. Bengals predictions: Our writers make their picks for Week 8

Their sentiments around the game are mixed. Sydney said that “it’s the dream” they aspired to achieve as children. At the same time, his competitive side came out when he admitted that he’s at a far different point in his season than Chase is as an offensive starter.

“I’m still coming back,” Sydney said. “I’m on my second game. So I’m still trying to earn my role back and be in a position to where I can say it is brother-versus-brother. ‘Cause right now, it’s more like, he has his big-time starting role on offense, and I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to be doing, more so on special teams and stuff.”

If the twins come into contact on the field, Sydney predicts a healthy exchange of trash talk after the play. Otherwise, their first face-to-face interaction of the afternoon might not come until the final whistle blows. Then, Sydney and Chase will meet at midfield to swap jerseys, tokens of the mutual support it took to reach that moment.

“They’ll smile for that picture,” Creneti said. “But one of them will be pissed off.”

The Eagles play in Week 8 against the Cincinnati Bengals. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Paycor Stadium.